I REMEMBER...Traveling in Europe in the 70's

...when I traveled in Europe many years ago, I had a self-imposed budget to keep me in bed and board for the six months I was traveling.  It was patterned after Frommer’s – “Europe on $10 a Day” (seriously...only $10 and it could be done.  There was even a $5 a Day earlier version). 

I had a certain amount of money in my pocket.  I had a finite number of days I wished to spend traveling.  Pretty easy math.  Number of dollars divided by number of days.  There were no more dollars coming into the equation, so for the equation to work, I had to be careful with the amount I spent per day.

I carried a little blue spiral notebook with me and it was very much like a checkbook.  On the first page I put the amount of money I had available and the amount I allotted myself to spend each day – all intended to arrive back home with zero dollars and zero days…mission complete.

I would track my expenses minutely, every penny, every day.  If I spent less money on Tuesday, I could carry that over to spend on the following Wednesday or add it back into the total.  I had three columns.  The first was the total dollars available for the day ($10.00). The second was what I actually spent that day.  The third was my plus or minus to carry over to the next day.  Pretty simple accounting.   


If I knew there was a day coming up that would require more money – I would miserly live a simpler life in the proceeding days to save up for the big spending day/week.  When the spending opportunity caught me off guard and I went over my daily budget, I had to pay the piper in the following days until I was even again.

The person I was traveling with voted to spend it all in London on clothes and antiques.  I voted to continue on by myself.


The unplanned cash expenditure of a one way ticket back to California (and eat the already-paid-for second return ticket) put a serious hamper in my budget.  The travel deal I had landed to make the trip in the first place was based on coming home on a specific flight on a specific date from Paris, six months into the future.  I had to make the money I had left for that specific number of days and I had just knocked a hole in that budget with about a month's equivalent of money pulled out unexpectedly.

My solution was to go to Crete - a little island off the coast of Greece and go"Off Grid" for a month until my remaining days matched up with my remaining money.  Walked forever along the coastline until I was miles from civilization (probably multi-million dollar condos there now).  I found a little abandoned bamboo hut - just in front of a large olive orchard and about ten feet from the Libyan Sea (a portion of the Mediterranean Sea) and actually had some of the best times of my six-month jaunt to Europe - doing absolutely nothing - no services - no people- no tourists - no museums.  I would hike into town once a week - buy bread, wine, cheese.  I eventually met the old man that owned the property - he had no problem with me staying there- I helped him in his orange orchard and olive orchard in exchange for the "free" rent.  He had been a wild party man back in his day and now he said the only thing he drank anymore was a small glass of extra-virgin olive oil to "stay regular".


 I still have the little blue book and a couple of photos.  I noticed that I would write down the words I needed to know when going from one country to another  (like: count to ten, bread, wine cheese, train station, etc.) phonetically, so I could pronounce them adequately..It did the job.


rlw

A upgrade from the $5/Day book - Europe travel doubled even then...

Cheap Is Still Better, Claims Travel Budgeteer Arthur Frommer, but Europe Costs $10 a Day Now  August 02, 1976    

Vol. 6

 

No. 5

That was then - this is now....

rlw

I REMEMBER...all Americans eat orange rinds.

I have had the great fortune to travel extensively.  It is great to learn about other cultures and dispel (or create) myths about Americans abroad.

It was about 1976 and I was in Ireland.  The Killarney hotel I was staying in had access to various day trips throughout the region for tourists to savor the "feel" of rural Ireland. I signed up and off we went for a full day of exploring the Irish hills and countryside.


There were about 30 tourists from all over the world on this particular adventure.  We had an early breakfast of kippers, potatoes, eggs, toast, tea and biscuits and were off a bit after sunrise.  We were all quite tired as there had been an IRA bomb scare in the middle of the night. We spent a few hours standing in our sleepwear in the parking lot, while the bomb dogs sniffed their way through our rooms.  Nevertheless, we were soon on our way (that strong Irish tea can kick some serious espresso butt) and we were definitively awake.  


This particular adventure was to be a three-part journey.  The first part was by Irish jaunting cart to the base of the foothills, a horse ride to the top of the hills, and then a boat ride back down the mountain through a series of canals and locks.  The jaunting carts were rickety and jostled us back and forth until we were quite queasy.  We were happy to get off the wooden plank seats and onto the horses, or should I say, "out of the frying pan and into the fire"?  Butt weary, we finally arrived at the top of our little mountain and took a break for lunch.

Slight digression:  Some twelve years before, I  was a junior in High School and on the Cordova High School wrestling team.  I loved the sport.  Truly an individual athlete's opportunity to shine.  Although you are on a team, you compete individually against a wrestler from another school.  The down side is that if you do poorly, you can't blame it on anyone for not blocking, passing, defending, etc.  Everyone just saw you out on the mat, by yourself, win or lose, it was all on you...which is also the upside.  When you win , it is all you.  After all- everyone just saw you out on the mat, by yourself, win or lose. 

Sooooo...I was competing at the 112 lb category, which was about 15 lbs below my normal weight.  The down side was that I was seriously thin and looked like a refugee from a concentration camp.  The upside is that I was HUGE for my category, my opponents were much smaller, and I won a lot.  Downside2 was that I constantly had to diet to maintain my weight category during the wrestling season.  My daily diet for lunch  (for two years) was a hard boiled egg, a cold minute-steak, an orange and water (1/2 liter bottles of water had not been invented yet...so it was a heavy stainless steel Thermos bottle of water.)  I was so starved at the end of lunch, I would stare hungrily at my trash...a paper bag, wax-paper wrappers (baggies not invented yet), egg shells, and orange peels.  Not enamored with the taste appeal of paper, wax or egg shells, I learned to eat (and enjoy!) orange peels and still maintain my diet. 

Back to the original story.  We are at the top of the mountain after a half-day of a kidney-jolting, open-air jaunting cart ride and a butt-blistering mountain pony ride to the top to connect with our afternoon downhill boat rides.  There was a series of canal locks back to the base of the mountain (and then more jaunting cart rides back to the hotel).  Here we are sitting on the precipice, lovely shades of green throughout the mountain and valley below, enjoying the hotel box lunch.  A Guinness, fish and chips (Irish chips are potato fries; American "chips" are called crisps) and of course, an orange.  So, there I was, in the company of thirty or so people from all over the world; I was the only American in our group.  Gazing out over the countryside, enjoying my lunch, I finished the fish and chips, drank the Guinness and proceeded to eat the orange in its entirety, just like an apple.  I had acquired a taste for orange peels from my high school athletic-diet days, and since I was gong to consume the orange peels anyway, I had learned to skip the peeling-the-skin-off part and just eat the whole thing.


It was quiet and peaceful...but I soon noticed, a bit too quiet.  All conversation around me had ceased.  I looked up and noticed that everyone was staring at me. I had no idea why.  I asked what was wrong and someone ventured - "You are eating the whole orange, peel and all!"  The only thing I could respond with was, "All Americans eat oranges this way, don't you?"


The pleasant boat ride through a series of locks winding back down the mountainside was comfortable, uneventful and extremely quiet, as everyone sat far away from me, taking furtive glances at me from time to time.  I am sure my international traveling companions included me in many  "American culture" post-vacation stories back home.


"Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”  Lord of the Rings, J.R. Tolkien

I REMEMBER...the Irish Pub Crawl

…traveling to Europe in the early 70’s (a lot of my life stories strangely happened in the 70’s) and spending time in Ireland. The pubs were a particularly intriguing phenomenon I had an interest in. Warm, friendly, a local tavern for food, drink and fun.

I was somewhat lucky at darts and Irish pubs harbored dart boards much like American bars have pool tables. I won my fair share of pints, dazzling the locals (who admittedly drank faster and in larger quantities than me…perhaps that was my asset in the competition).

So having met some new found darts & drinking friends at a pub one evening (they were off-duty ambulance drivers- I hope they were off-duty…) we forged a deal. The public taverns closed rather early during the week (so the workers would actually show up to work the next day) – the only bars that stayed open late were the ones inside the nicer hotels for the hotel patrons. They offered to treat me to a “Pub Crawl” (which is a much more apt description than the Americanized “bar hopping”. I observed that there were definite tricks for a successful pub crawl that seemed to incorporate rugby/roller derby moves and teamwork. A good pub crawl needs at least two big, strong, rugby/roller-derby guys that are socially ambivalent to under-breath comments and glares, the money man and the rest of the drinking team. Note: all the best pubs in Dublin were packed and everyone seemed to be speed-drinking, so there is no “getting a drink and going back to your table” – that action is too lightweight to survive. Each bar was packed and several people deep. Alone, I never would have even made it to the bar and if I had and then left – I doubt if I could have made it back for a second beer (pint).

So, the game plan was to have all of us (about six) line up behind the two bruiser “breakers (literally). They would elbow and push their way through the throng until, at last, the biggest and strongest found the bar (zygote!!). He would plant himself there and the second team member would be right behind him fending off all other drinkers to maintain a strong line. We would string out behind the first two, foot to foot, with the money man at the end. This was our fire line- like a bucket brigade with volunteer firefighters (except these guys were medics/ambulance drivers). Money man passes money forward through the line to get to the main bar position holder, who secures the pints and passes them back down the line until we are all properly lubed. This pattern is repeated, to insure an uninterrupted and even flow of suds until a. the money runs out or b. the pub closes ( or in my case, after b. comes c. – the acquisition to your “line” of a tourist with a pass to the after-hours bar in an upscale hotel- good for a couple more hours of drinking).

Note: I have no idea what these guys were talking about that evening (probably beer, women, and tourists) as their brogue got thicker and my hearing got fuzzier as the evening wore on. I remember we laughed a lot, so it must have been humorous.

I pick up accents fairly quickly and when motivated by inhibition, fairly well also. My biggest compliment of the evening was being mistaken for a drunk from Scotland. Hoot, laddy, not so bloody bad, eh?